Published 4:00 am, Monday, September 2, 2002

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Antoinetta Staldman lives in a 10-foot-by-10-foot room with her cat, Tigre, sharing a community bathroom at the Baldwin Hotel. Many residential hotels have sprinklers only in the hallways. Chronicle photo by Brant Ward less

Antoinetta Staldman lives in a 10-foot-by-10-foot room with her cat, Tigre, sharing a community bathroom at the Baldwin Hotel. Many residential hotels have sprinklers only in the hallways. Chronicle photo by ... more

The owners of some of San Francisco's oldest and seediest hotels must submit plans by Tuesday to install fire sprinklers in every room or face stiff fines, according to a law designed to prevent deadly fires.

In the city's strongest effort in almost two decades to improve living conditions at residential hotels, some 354 owners must show how they will install the sprinklers by Dec. 31.

The original law, sponsored by Supervisor Gavin Newsom, set the installation deadline for June 30.

But only about 20 hotels had even filed plans by that date. The city extended the deadline to Sept. 1 and then gave hotel owners a few more days over the holiday weekend to comply.

Now, any hotel owner who doesn't submit plans could be slapped with up to $1,000-a-day fines after a series of warnings, hearings and citations. City officials said they did not know how many hotel owners had submitted plans since the original deadline.

The hotels that haven't fully installed sprinklers include three of five buildings that the city has leased and renovated to house low-income residents,

according to Newsom's office.

"At a certain point you just find it unexcusable," Newsom said. "We set a bad example."

While hotel owners say the city hasn't given them enough time to raise cash to pay for the sprinklers, residents are anxiously watching the calendar.

"I think sprinklers are essential," said Mark Ellinger, who lives in the small 32-room Shree Ganeshai hotel on Sixth Street, which has sprinklers mostly in the hallways.

Ellinger, 52, said last fall he had awakened to smoke and the sounds of firefighters pounding on doors, his only clue that flames were burning on the floor below, where a mattress had caught fire.

Ellinger also had to evacuate his $520-a-month room two months ago, when the 188-room Baldwin next door caught fire. That 3:30 a.m. blaze left about 200 people homeless as city officials and social workers scrambled to find them rooms in shelters and other hotels. They moved back Aug. 15.

"It's taking the hotel owners too long to get started," said resident Antoinetta Staldman, who has lived in a 10-foot by 10-foot room and shared a community bathroom at the Baldwin for 11 years.

Her crowded room, which she shares with her cat, Tigre, shows the signs of water damage -- peeling paint and plaster -- from yet another fire, the 1997 blaze at the Delta next door. The Delta remains closed, but renovation began this year.

These residential hotels are the last option for affordable housing in an increasingly expensive city. The small rooms often don't have bathrooms, and the tenants frequently cook their meals on hot plates in their rooms. Most of the hotels are located along Sixth Street, in the Tenderloin, Chinatown or the Mission District.

During the past decade, fires have forced the closure of about a dozen of them, eliminating approximately 800 rooms. Three people died in fires at the Delta and the King in 1999 and the Kinney in 2000.

He said his contractor had told him that installing sprinklers in his 70- room Menton hotel, an 80-year-old building on Ellis Street, would cost up to $125,000.

When asked whether he'd have the installation plans ready to file by the deadline, Patel said, "I don't know."

"We're not against this at all," said Patel, who also is a member of the city's residential hotel task force. "But we need help in terms of planning. We're getting gouged."

Patel also said he and other owners had been confused about deadlines in the year since the sprinkler law passed. Newsom, hotel owners and advocates for residents fought over whether to extend the compliance deadline to 2004.

The law applies to hotels with 20 or more rooms.

The last time the city addressed fire safety in hotels was in 1986, when sprinklers were required in hotel hallways and certain other common areas.